Monday, July 24, 2017

The Mouse Is Watching

Studios like Disney have used the reactions of test audiences to gauge early cuts of films for decades, often making changes to the edit or ending if the film wasn’t hitting as hoped. What’s different in this instance is the sheer amount of analysis Disney Research was able to produce with this methodology: 3,179 people generated 16 million points of data.
As Disney Research scientist Peter Carr put it to Phys.org: “It’s more data than a human is going to look through. That’s where computers come in–to summarize the data without losing important details.” Impressively, the neural net isn’t just capable of summarizing takeaways. Within just a few minutes of watching a filmgoer, it could predict their facial expressions throughout the rest of the film.